I want to say that I agree very much with what you are saying here,
especially that the language needs to move forward. That said, I think it
needs to not be changed in ways that will break VistA. I also think we need
to accept that the language is going to move forward in a different way than
having a resurected MDC. What needs to move forward also is both the SAC
and the Kernel to allow ways to use the language extensions available in GTM
and Cache. I wonder if the community is ideologically opposed to moving the
language forward or just stuck on the idea that there is only one way to
move it forward.
Jim Gray
----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Woodhouse" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 9:42 AM
Subject: [Hardhats-members] MUMPS and VistA ( more M read questions)
I actually didn't know that MUMPS_V1 was (now) open source. Originally,
I was looking for a version of MUMPS that I could run under Windows
but, as I recall, the developer was adamant that it not be ported to
Windows, so it was of no real use to me. Since then, I've decided to
use OS X as my primary operating system, so that may not be an issue.
But as I said before, ther are other things I'm interested in doing
right now. My opinion is that MUMPS is an underappreciated language,
and I believe that it is in the long term best interest of the MUMPS
community to move the language forward. I also believe it is feasible
to do so, but the community seems almost ideologically opposed to this
course. The argument is framed as one of "practicality" or of "saving
VistA", but I don't think marrying ourselves to the existing code base
without providing a way forward is saving VistA. At best, it's getting
a product out the door.
--- Jim Self <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Greg Woodhouse wrote:
>--- Jim Self <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Greg Woodhouse wrote:
>> >Off hand, I don't know, but members of this list do seem to have
a
>> >tendency to "plug" GT.M (presumably because it is open source).
>> >Personally, I think we'd all benefit from a little more vendor
>> >neutrality.
>>
>> I am not a vendor and neither is GT.M.
>
>No, but Fidelity is.
If you know my history, then you should know that I advocate Free
MUMPS, not vendors. You
do not buy a license for GT.M/Linux from a vendor. You download it
from Sourceforge or get
it from a friend.
>Open source may be a
>good thing (and I think it is), but is it being touted because it's
the
>"right" way to do things or because it's the cheapest?
I don't know of any serious advocate of Open Source or Free software
who doesn't primarily
believe that it is the right way (and perhaps ultimately the only
way) to develop and
promote open standards for computing and the knowledge that we need
(widespread and deep)
to develop and maintain secure and reliable computing and
communications systems in the
long term.
>> At the moment, GT.M is the only Free (Open Source) MUMPS
>> implementation that has been
>> taken seriously enough by VistA developers to make VistA work on
it.
>
>Perhaps so. But reason may only be that it has become something of a
>juggernaut -- people put their efforts into GT.M because that is
where
>other people are putting their efforts,
MUMPS_V1 was freely available for a good while before GT.M was
released for Linux, but
unfortunately, MUMPS_V1 was only free, not Free (Open Source) until
some time after
attention had shifted to GT.M. Before that I worked with it and
tested it repeatedly for
conformance to the MUMPS standards and talked it up on this list and
elsewhere as a
serious effort at implementing standard MUMPS that was worthy of
serious attention. It
still is.
---------------------------------------
Jim Self
Systems Architect, Lead Developer
VMTH Computer Services, UC Davis
(http://www.vmth.ucdavis.edu/us/jaself)
===
Gregory Woodhouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"Design quality doesn't ensure success, but design failure can ensure
failure."
--Kent Beck
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